Fall - Hardcover

Maristed, Kai

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679444092 ISBN 13: 9780679444091

Publisher: Random House, 1996

Synopsis

This new novel by the P.E.N.-Hemingway Prize finalist focuses on Erica, a horse trainer, and Lex, the supervisor of security at the stable, with whom Erica becomes intertwined. When someone starts maiming and killing the highly-insured show horses, Erica and Lex come to new understandings of life in the shadowy stables, behind the bright lights. 20,000

About this title

From the Back Cover

el by the P.E.N.-Hemingway Prize finalist focuses on Erica, a horse trainer, and Lex, the supervisor of security at the stable, with whom Erica becomes intertwined. When someone starts maiming and killing the highly-insured show horses, Erica and Lex come to new understandings of life in the shadowy stables, behind the bright lights. 20,000

Reviews

Both the one-word title and the premise-that someone is killing horses in the high-stakes world of top-level horse showing-could have come from Dick Francis, but the supple language and sociological insights of Maristed's intriguing second novel (after the acclaimed Out After Dark, 1993) are very much her own. Fortyish and down on his luck, Lex Healey stumbles into both love and trouble when he takes a job as a security supervisor on the "A" horse-riding circuit. Valuable jumpers and equitation mounts are being killed. The horses of Erica Hablicht, the gutsy trainer whom Lex has fallen for, seem bound to be the next victims-and if they're not, Erica may be the next suspect. This plot may be familiar, and perhaps a bit tepid, but Maristed's characters are as robust as real life, from the anxiety-ridden junior hopeful to the alcoholic horse-show mother. Her insider's perspective is impressive as she compassionately describes the dramatic horse-show scene and the people who, out of love, habit, greed and desperation, make it thrive.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Snappy stylist Maristed (Out After Dark, 1993) shows herself to be a scathing sociologist--if a less than thrilling mystery writer--in this occasionally romantic fictional expos‚ of the world of show jumping. It's a world where hard-as-nails trainers put their teenage riders through a hellish summer on the way to national competition. Unsavory practices in this moneyed culture include doping steeds so they'll perform better, and bumping off highly insured mounts for the money. Lex Healey is a 40ish drifter who's fallen in with this set largely, it seems, because of his practical wardrobe: T-shirts and jeans (good around the paddock). A security man who bumbles more than he protects, Lex has a fling going with the trainer everyone loves to hate, Erica Hablicht, an outsider whose riders have a habit of triumphing against established favorites. It's unclear whether Erica shares Lex's dizzy lovesickness, but she certainly doesn't let her reservations show when they're boffing, which is often. Minor characters--Hispanic grooms, slimy insurance investigators, loudmouth WASP parents, and unscrupulous trainers- -nip around the edges of the plot, but the one Maristed focuses on- -to the tale's detriment--is Ruth Pryor, a former rider crippled in an auto accident. Like a paralyzed Nancy Drew, Ruth motors around the shows in her golf cart, determined both to solve the mystery of several suspicious horse deaths and to learn the identity of the man who crippled her. She emerges as a tragic figure, but her story can't compete with Lex and Erica's more straightforward struggle. Lex is playing detective, too, but his talentless fumblings are clouded by Maristed's tendency to spend more time displaying her vast knowledge of what show jumping is about than in sticking to the mystery. A well-told and sinuously written story, full of flashes of brilliance. But, unfortunately, it deals with such a small sporting universe that it runs the risk of eluding the notice it deserves. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A dreary insider's view of the junior horse show world, this novel by the author of Out After Dark (LJ 9/1/93) features a security man named Lex who's involved in a romance with a married horse trainer, Erica. The only other plot intrigue centers on some suspicious horse injuries and deaths, which may prove to be insurance-related. Neither Erica nor Lex is a particularly pleasant character, nor is the paraplegic Ruthie, a former rider, who watches their affair. So the romance at the seedy edge of affluent adolescent athletics is more dismal than affecting. The details of horse-show life, with illegal immigrant workers, pushy parents, and insecure teenagers, must be interesting to those familiar with this subculture, but it is pretty plodding fare for the general reader. Skip this one.?Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679444092
• ISBN 13: 9780679444091
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 275